Pinterest's New Acquisition Should Help Its Search And Ad Offerings

Pinterest just announced that is has acquired the team and technology behind recommendation and commerce startup Kosei. The company says it will use he acquisition to accelerate its discovery and monetization efforts.

"The team includes some of the best minds in machine learning, data science and recommendation engines, who’ve created a unique technology stack that drives commerce by making highly personalized and powerful product recommendations," a spokesperson tells WebProNews. "Among Kosei's accomplishments is building a graph that understands more than 400 million relationships between 30 million products."

Asked about how the acquisition will affect Pinterest's efforts in search and advertising, the spokesperson said, "Over the years we’ve been building a system for helping people discover the most relevant Pins, and the Kosei team is a great complement to our existing technology (see how we’ve been using machine learning here). The acquisition of Kosei will enable us to move faster in our efforts to provide relevant recommendations across the service, as well as in ad targeting and measurement as we roll out Promoted Pins."

The post linked to above talks about the acquisition, and notes that machine learning tech will be used by the discovery team, which includes search. This is something to consider if you're considering your Pinterest SEO efforts.

We're told that Pinterest will be working with the Kosei team in the next 90 days to best understand how to integrate their team and technology.

Michael Lopp, head of Pinterest engineering, said in a statement, "As people use Pinterest to save and discover the things they want to do in the future, we have a growing data set of more than 30 billion objects that will only get more powerful over time. With these leaders in machine learning and recommendation systems, we can move faster in discovery and monetization, and building an infrastructure to help brands better understand customer intention and deliver the best content to Pinners."

Head of Pinterest partnerships Joanne Bradford added, “Recommendations and ads systems are rapidly changing due to the confluence of mobile and personalization. The Kosei team and technology will help us accelerate our ad efforts by offering marketers more solutions to tap into our growing and valuable data set and object graph. This year we’ll provide the best ads canvas with the most actionable insights to reach an engaged and passionate brand-centric audience.”

Kosei co-founder and CEO Lance Riedel said, "We’ve delivered an amazing product that combines a wide range of disciplines, from machine learning to outstanding engineering and a deep understanding of products and consumer interests. As Pinterest builds a recommendation engine for all objects, joining the company will only accelerate our efforts, ultimately leading to very real benefits for commerce partners and Pinners. We’ve been focusing on revolutionizing recommendations with a deep understanding of serving beautiful ads to the right people in the moments that matter, and Pinterest’s vision for building a next generation discovery platform matches our own.”